When Terrie Rath met Jimmy Carter, she didn’t know why he handed her a bag of peanuts. She didn’t know what he said. She didn’t realize he was President of the United States of America until years later.

She had just landed in the Minneapolis airport, 13 years old and 48 pounds. Her new parents, Marlowe and Ethel Beckman, had spent more than a month in Columbia, working through the ins-and-outs of adopting her to bring her home to Mora, Minnesota.

Terrie was overwhelmed by the United States.

“When I first saw my parents’ home—and they weren’t rich—but when I saw their home, I felt like the richest girl in the whole world,” she says.

She had never seen so much food. Her parents took her to meet part of her extended family, treated to a Thanksgiving-like meal at her new grandparents’ home.

“They were passing the dishes of food around, and I watched what everyone was doing,” Terrie says. “When the bowl got to me, I (depicts taking scoop after scoop of food onto her plate). My dad came over and started taking some of the food off my plate, and I cried.”

She didn’t know food was easy to come by here in her new home. It wouldn’t be her last chance at so much abundance.